humpback whale

Environmentally, India’s Hydrocarbon Sector Enjoys a Regulatory Free-for-all

An environmental clearance granted for exploration of shale oil and gas in some districts of Gujarat shows fracking operations are treated no differently than conventional methods for hydrocarbon exploration. This is imprudent.

In March and early April of 2019, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Vedanta applied to the Union environment ministry for prior environmental clearances to survey for hydrocarbons and sink 314 exploratory wells in the onshore and offshore regions of the Cauvery basin in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

A review of the applications, the standard terms of reference prescribed for conducting environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for such proposals and environmental clearances issued by the ministry reveals how oil and gas installations in India are operating in a regulatory vacuum.

Going by the environment ministry’s track record of appraising hydrocarbon projects, it seems likely that the use of controversial methods like hydraulic fracturing and seismic airgun surveys, which can devastate groundwater, fish and marine mammals, are going to be permitted in the Cauvery basin without assessing their impact. And given the hazardous nature of these activities, such under-regulated operations will only further endanger the environment and livelihoods of fisherfolk and farmers in the region.

The ministry has routinely exempted offshore drilling proposals from public hearing, arguing that such projects happen away from populated areas and will not impact communities. Vedanta has also requested such an exemption. However, the projects are not only offshore but also contemplate drilling and hydraulic fracturing on land in parts of Puducherry, Villupuram, Cuddalore, Karaikal and Nagapattinam.

Moreover, offshore operations can impact land-based communities by harming the fish stock and even certain fish species, and threatening the fisheries and coastline by increasing the risk of earthquakes and oil spills.

Seismic failures

The environment ministry’s EIA manual for exploration and production drilling for hydrocarbons requires the assessment of baseline data for fish and other biodiversity, including details about fishing zones and fish breeding areas. It suggests that the impact of seismic surveys and drilling in marine environments should be assessed.

According to the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 2011, coastal zone management plans are mandated to contain fishing zones and fish breeding areas. However, the ministry has approved incomplete plans for Tamil Nadu and Puducherry that don’t contain these details.

Neither the application documents submitted by Vedanta or ONGC nor the standard terms of reference routinely prescribed by the environment ministry makes any mention of the potential impact of seismic surveys. The environment clearance also prescribes no conditions designed to protect fish populations from the disruptive effect of seismic surveys. Finally, fishing activities, fish breeding zones and migratory corridors of marine animals are completely disregarded.

Offshore seismic surveys are conducted by ships that trail an array of airguns that explode underwater. Another trailing array of sensors pick up the reflected sound waves to decipher the nature of the rocky substrate, and identify hydrocarbon-bearing formations beneath the seabed.

In a seismic survey, explosions are triggered every 10 to 15 seconds and can continue round the clock for weeks on end. These explosions are among the loudest noises in the marine environment.

Also read: All You Need to Know About the Neduvasal Protests Against Hydrocarbon Extraction

The airgun blasts can harm fish populations, and empty entire stretches of the sea of fish as they are scared away to deeper waters. A study published in 2017 reported that the blasts increased mortality among adult and larval zooplankton by 2-3 times, with the effects seen up to 1.2 km away.

A press release by the study’s authors noted, “Zooplankton underpin the health and productivity of global marine ecosystems, and what this research has shown is that commercial seismic surveys could cause significant disruption to their population levels.”

Marine creatures like whales, dolphins and octopuses that use sound to communicate and navigate can also become disoriented, suffer hearing damage, become stressed, have their migratory patterns disrupted, even die.

Ocean Conservation Research, a non-profit research organisation, hosts a library of sea sounds on its website that demonstrates the disruptive effect airgun blasts can have in the pelagic soundscape. Listen first to the sounds made by various sea creatures, and then compare it to the deafening explosion of an underwater airgun.

Humpback whale:

Minke whale:

Bowhead whale:

Beluga whale:

Bearded seal:

Seismic airgun:

The waters off Villupuram, Puducherry and Nagapattinam are popular dolphin and whale haunts.

Vedanta claims in its application that the project areas don’t include the critical habitats of any endangered species. This is false. According to a report published by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem project, this region has several species of threatened or protected whale, dolphin, seabird, turtle and shark, and includes the migratory corridors for the whale shark and the Olive Ridley sea turtles.

Unregulated fracking

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a controversial technique used to extract hydrocarbons. It requires large volumes of water and is associated with ground and surface water pollution and a heightened risk of quakes. The Indian regulatory regime does not require adequate disclosure of these risks to public, and fails to mandate any relevant impact assessment and management regime.

An environmental clearance granted for exploration of shale oil and gas in Mehsana, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Kheda and Bharuch districts of Gujarat reveals how fracking operations are treated no differently than conventional methods for hydrocarbon exploration and production. No special requirements are prescribed for handling wastewater from fracking, for checking fracking-induced seismicity or to avoid water stress and conflicts due to freshwater scarcity.

Also read: Moving Away From Fossil Fuels Isn’t Separate From Moving Towards Social Justice

Hydrocarbon wells yield toxic and radioactive wastewater called produced water that has to be handled carefully. With fracking, the produced water is also contaminated with chemicals used in the fracking fluid. Indian regulations contain no special handling requirement for these chemicals.

Various estimates place the Cauvery basin’s total recoverable shale gas reserves at 4.5-9 trillion cubic feet. Exploration for shale gas and oil has already begun in nine blocks of Cauvery basin. These include the Kuthalam, Greater Bhuvanagiri, Greater Narimanam, Koothanallur, L-II, L-I, Greater Kali, Ramanathapuram and Kamalapuram sectors.

Hydrocarbon deposits in shale rock are difficult to assess because the oil or gas is held within tight rock formations that need to be fractured first allow the fluid to flow into the well. Mobilising these deposits for extraction involves energy- and water-intensive methods.

One of the them is fracking: pumping large quantities of water laced with various chemicals and a special sand called proppant into oil wells to fracture the rock and create channels for the hydrocarbon to flow through. The proppant, made of aluminium silicate, is used to keep the cracks open.

Fracking a single well can consume 5,000-15,000 m³ of water compared to 800-1,400 m³ for conventional hydrocarbon wells. Add to this the 15 m³ of fracking fluid and 50,000 m³ of proppant sand.

The fracking chemicals are toxic to humans and marine life. Nonylphenol ethoxylate can disrupt the development, growth, behaviour and survival of aquatic species. Methylisothiazolinone is neurotoxic and genotoxic. Other substances include compounds of boron, phenol formaldehyde resins, glyoxal and isotridecanol ethoxylate.

Vedanta’s pre-feasibility report states, “Fracturing effluent generated will be discharged in the HDPE lined pits at the drilling well sites. Additional land will be procured wherever required. For effective recycling and reuse of the frac fluid, effluent treatment plant will be installed, thus raw water required for fracturing will be minimised.”

Such casual handling of highly contaminated wastewater in a region surrounded by productive agricultural fields is fraught with problems.

Also read: NGT Committee Finds Sterlite Violated Laws but Pleads for Leniency

The project proposals also include the possibility of offshore fracking. However, no review of the impact has been proposed or has been included in the standard terms of reference prescribed for such projects by the environment ministry.

A similar lapse by the US government in permitting fracking in California’s coastal waters was successfully challenged by the state of California. The latter argued that the government had failed to consider the impact of offshore fracking on marine endangered species. In November 2018, a US court ordered the Trump administration to stop permitting fracking off California’s coastal waters.

Fracking generates millions of litres of toxic produced water, and Vedanta’s proposal to “discharge” it in open-lined pits onsite is unviable and dangerous. Equally dangerous is the controversial alternative to this practice, which involves injecting these effluents into deep wells in the neighbourhood. Such underground injection of wastewater can trigger earthquakes that in turn can endanger property and lives.

Geologists from the National Institute of Oceanography reported in 2010 that “coastal seismicity due to the reactivation of the pre-existing tectonic lineaments extending offshore represents a potential natural hazard”, particularly in the Puducherry area.

Baseline blunders

Despite the adopting “best practices”, hydrocarbon extraction remains a dirty activity. Groundwater in the vicinity of hydrocarbon wells and well-sites where produced wastewater is injected tend to become flush with metals such as sodium, magnesium, barium and strontium, and hydrocarbons like toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene and benzene.

The generation of a representative baseline of water quality around each well site and systematic monitoring of the groundwater is imperative for early detection of well-induced contamination, and for pursuing any future claims for liability or restoration of groundwater.

Companies like Vedanta are particularly notorious for evading liability. In Thoothukudi, where Vedanta’s Sterlite copper smelter is being blamed for contaminating groundwater with toxic metals, the company has claimed there is insufficient data to establish that contamination has increased above the baseline.

In the Cauvery basin, Vedanta has proposed and will likely get away with a baseline data generation regime that is inadequate and flawed. It proposes to sink 158 wells in Nagapattinam and Karaikal. Of these, at least 20 will be on land and spread over 181 sq. km. Ideally, baseline data ought to be generated from at least 8-10 locations around each proposed hydrocarbon well. However, Vedanta proposes to take samples from a total of only eight locations spread over the entire 181 km². That’s one groundwater sample for ever 23 km². No samples are proposed to be taken from offshore locations.

Any regulation is only as good as its enforcement, and for hydrocarbon activities, it is a regulatory free-for-all.

Also read: The Countdown Begins For Tamil Nadu’s Beach Sand Mining Cartel

According to one report prepared by members of Cauvery Delta Watch (including this author) using information in the public domain and RTI applications, where ONGC claims to have dug 700 wells in the districts of Cuddalore, Ariyalur, Nagapattinam, Thiruvarur, Thanjavur, Pudukottai and Ramanathapuram, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) only has records for 219. Similarly, while ONGC claims to have 183 wells in production, TNPCB only has records for 71. And none of the wells has a valid ‘consent to operate’ under the Air and Water Acts.

In fact, even if they wanted to, the state pollution control boards of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry can’t monitor the activities or enforce the law because they aren’t equipped to do so.

The TNPCB claims it inspects ‘red category’ industries, such as exploration or production wells, once every three or four months and takes samples from these installations once every month or three months. But with offshore locations – such as 138 wells that Vedanta plans to drill in the Bay of Bengal – the TNPCB will have to rely on Vedanta’s good intentions. The board doesn’t have the means to travel to sea to inspect or collect samples. And even if the board was interested in preventing violations, it can’t possibly detect the illegal dumping of hazardous wastes or untreated effluents in the sea.

In all the hydrocarbon sector exposes the sham that is environmental governance in India.

Nityanand Jayaraman is a Chennai-based writer and social activist.

Scientists Surprised to Find a Dead Humpback Whale in Brazil’s Amazon

At this time of year, humpback whales should be thousands of miles away – near Antarctica.

New Delhi: Marine biologists in Brazil were surprised on February 22 when they came across a lifeless young humpback whale that had washed ashore on an island in the Amazon river. At this time of year, humpback whales should be thousands of miles away – somewhere near Antarctica.

According to the New York Times, the young whale’s body was found by members of Bicho D’Água, a conservation group, who followed vultures circling a mangrove forest on Marajó Island. According to what government officials told local reporters, the whale had been dead for a few days when it was discovered.

“During this season, the tide normally rises twice a day to almost four meters and floods the mangrove forest, bringing lots of trash, including trash from ships from a lot of places in the world,” CNN quoted Bicho D’Água oceanographer Maura Sousa as saying. “This explains why an inflated carcass, due to the gases of the decomposition, was dragged into the mangrove forest.”

Biologists studied the carcass over the weekend to try and figure out why it died. “We are collecting information, identifying marks on the body, to determine if it was trapped in a net or hit by a boat,” Guardian quoted the president of Bicho D’Água, Renata Emin, as saying. The scientists believe that the whale was separated from its mother not long before it died.

Researchers are also conducting DNA tests to ascertain where the whale came from, CNN reported.

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A post shared by Bicho D’água (@bicho_dagua) on Feb 23, 2019 at 1:34pm PST

While Brazil does see a large number of humpback whales every year – in the tens of thousands – they are usually long gone by February. They migrate south for the summer, to feed near Antarctica. This young whale then was close to 6,400 km from where it was supposed to be, according to the NYT.

“This calf probably got separated from its mother, maybe its mother had died, in the southern summer, and then wandered about trying to find food. The idea that it was killed by ingesting plastic would need some evidence first to support it. It seems to me more likely that it simply starved to death. If they do a postmortem examination, we will have a clearer idea,” Peter Evans, the director of the Sea Watch Foundation, told the Guardian.

Also read: When a Whale Blows Its Snot Out, Scientists Offer It a Drone, Not a Kerchief

According to the Independent, authorities will not be able to move the carcass from where it washed ashore. “It’s very difficult to get there and there’s no way we can send a bulldozer because it would not get through. There is no way to remove it. To get there, we need to cross the swamp,” Dirlene Silva, from the state environment department, was quoted as saying.

CNN reported that the Federal University of Pará’s pathology laboratory is performing a necropsy on the body. The results will be available in about 20 days, the channel reported.

The humpback whale was endangered because of massive whaling operations in the 19th and 20th centuries, but recent conservation efforts have revived the species’ population. However, that doesn’t meant that whales face no threats at all. A bigger population means there is a higher chance of the mammals getting caught in fishing nets or being struck by a ship.

In addition, as The Wire has reported, another threat to humpback whales comes from noise pollution. The mysterious song of the humpback whale – which they use to communicate – is silenced when they stray close to commercial ships.

How Noise Pollution Is Silencing Whale Songs – and Why That’s a Problem

According to a new study, the mysterious song of the humpback whale is silenced when they stray close to commercial ships.

Amidst honking horns and the bustle of traffic, you may have sometimes yearned for the quiet of the oceans, where you don’t have to shout to be heard. But the oceans are not the silent havens they once were. Increased shipping traffic has made them noisy, and this does not seem to bode well for some ocean citizens – like the humpback whale. According to a new study, the mysterious song of the humpback whale is silenced when they stray close to commercial ships.

Most marine mammals like dolphins and whales use sound as their chief mode of communication, as other senses are diminished in water. The sounds of some whale species are complicated pieces, often referred to as songs, comprising multiple units. Only the male whales sing during mating season, so it is generally believed that they sing to attract mates. They also produce other types of sounds thought to help in feeding. Whale songs are unique to populations in a geographic area, where all the males of the group sing similar songs, and are very different from whales from a different region.

However, the ocean is no longer quiet. Ships, seismic testing, military communications using sonar, and oil and gas drills are only a handful of acoustic disturbances created by man. “It’s so noisy that by human standards whales should be wearing earmuffs to deaden the noise or else go deaf,” wrote Christopher Clark of Cornell University, who has been listening to whales for a long time, in an essay This man-made noise makes it difficult for whales to breed, feed and survive in the loud oceans.

Also read: For Conservation to Work, We Need to Rescue Crocodiles From Animal Rights

Several studies in the past have documented the effect of extraneous noise on whale sounds. Using recordings made of humpback whale songs off the coast of Hawaii in 1998, researchers figured out that the whales sang for longer in response to US Navy sonar broadcasts.

A 2012 study reported that blue whales called more during days when seismic exploration activities, which use acoustic pulses, took place, suggesting the whales were trying to compensate for the louder ambient noise. A more recent study reported that ship noise reduces the number of dives humpback whales take to find food at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Massachusetts, a busy shipping route.

Now, a new study reports that shipping noise completely silences the whales. The frequency range of whale vocalisations is a few tens of Hz to about 4 kHz, which overlaps with the noise frequency from ships. Researchers studied the effect of noise from passenger ships on humpback whales off the Ogasawara Islands in Japan. “This study is fascinating because of its unique setting in such a pristine area with very little ship traffic,” said Denise Risch of the Scottish Association for Marine Science, who studies how marine animals are affected by sound. Hence, noise source from single ships could be identified and the response of a single humpback whale could be monitored. “In most other, busier areas, it is often difficult to disentangle several potential causes for an observed change in behaviour,” she said.

The researchers used hydrophones, underwater microphones, to record underwater noise from February to May 2017. The recordings were analysed to identify whale songs and ship noise and determine the location of the whale in relation to the ship’s path. Over the period, 26 singing whales were identified, with about 1-3 singers in a day.

Credit: NPS Photo/ Kaitlin Thoresen

The data showed that whales in close proximity to the ships, up to about 1,200 m, reduced singing or stopped completely when the ship was approaching or after it was gone. Most of the whales started singing again only after about 30 minutes after the ship passed by. Surprisingly, if the whales were even closer to the ships, less than 500 m, there seemed to be no change in their singing behaviour.

“Humpback whales seemed to stop singing temporarily rather than modifying sound characteristics of their song under the noise, generated by a passenger-cargo liner,” said the authors in a statement. In the Ogasawara water, the noise generated by the ships was at most 8 dB above the ambient. Hence, it may be that it is more efficient for the whales to simply stop singing and wait for the noise to pass, rather than trying to be heard over the noise, suggest the authors.

Although it is clear that ship noise has an effect on whale songs, the study does not tell us how the songs affect other non-singers such as females and calves, as only the males sing.

“Few studies have investigated the impact of ships of known source level on individual animals and in the context of a specific behaviour. Such data is vital in order to assess and model longer term and larger scale impacts of noise,” said Risch. This is particularly important for a species like the humpback whale, as their songs are generally supposed to be breeding display, and any noise affecting this might affect their mating and future success of the species.

Also read: Eggs With Benefits: Sydney’s Same-Sex Penguins Become Parents

Noise pollution affects a wide variety of species both on land and in water, including us. A common response among both land and marine animals is the modification of vocal behaviour. Urban birds are known to sing or call at higher frequencies than their rural counterparts, just to be heard above the din. Other responses include increased stress, loss of hearing and in extreme cases changing their behaviour so dramatically as to cause death. This happened when 16 whales were stranded off the Bahamas in 2000 in response to Navy sonar exercises, several had bleeding ears and some were dead. A few years later a similar mass stranding of three species of whales, at least 37 in number, was reported around the coast of North Carolina, US, again in response to Navy sonar exercises. Most of the whales were dead.

The evidence for how noise pollution affects marine animals is growing. The behavioural response of these animals to noise is complex, being dependent on species, the context, the noise source and how familiar the animals are with the noise, said Risch. Sometimes the animals reduce calls, sometimes they call more, or at higher frequencies and for longer durations.

However, this study only adds to concerns that once again, humans may be interfering with how other animals behave, even in the deep of the ocean. Not only does this hurt the rich diversity of marine animals, it also affects some communities that are dependent on the ocean for their livelihood. One method Clark suggests to help the animals is to create acoustic sanctuaries, areas of the ocean where human noise is restricted, leaving the natural soundscape as it is. An increasing body of evidence showing how we are affecting the animals around us means only a concerted effort by everybody concerned can make a different. And in the process, we may actually be helping ourselves, too.

Lakshmi Supriya is a freelance science writer based in Bengaluru.

When a Whale Blows Its Snot Out, Scientists Offer It a Drone, Not a Kerchief

Get past the retch-provoking slimy goo horror and you’ll find each snot blow contains a large amount of biologically relevant information about a whale.

The effects of climate change haven’t spared a single species on Earth, affecting everyone from the gigantic blue whales in the pelagic to the minuscule bacteria in the soil. To protect these species and to be able to sense impending danger, it is important that scientists monitor the health of their populations. And they have done so using a variety of techniques and technologies, all the way up to using machine-learning to simulate their evolution. However, the investigations aren’t always so Daedalean; a curious case in point is that of the humpback whales.

Though not as large as the blue whale, the humpback whale is pretty big for an animal, measuring up to 40-50 feet in length. Such size together with the fact that it’s hard to obtain ‘samples’ of their biological matter for study has forced scientists to seek out a non-traditional approach when studying their population. According to Dipani Sutaria, an independent ecologist specialising in aquatic mammals, whole blow points the way: “Analysing whale blow samples is a very cool and clever way of collecting information on individual health, population genetics and otherwise relevant data on viral diversity, too.”

What’s whale blow, you ask? Well, it’s snot.

Snot is as pathologically useful as it is disgusting. Get past the retch-provoking slimy goo horror and you’ll find each snot blow contains a large amount of biologically relevant information. Scientists can figure out a lot about an individual’s health by analysing the bacterial and viral makeup in its snot, and it’s a useful way to track the health of whales in time.

That said, the tricky part is collecting whale not. Surely swimming up to a group of humpbacks, petri dish in hand, can’t be the best way to collect this precious substance. In 2010, a group of researchers in the UK suggested that remote controlled helicopters – i.e. drones – could be used to collect whale snot. The idea was ludicrous and the researchers were awarded an Ig Nobel Prize that year for their ‘improbable’ experimental work. And unlike many other Ig Nobel worthy ideas that “make you laugh, and then think”, theirs had some serious issues. For example, the snot samples could easily be contaminated or lost during the drop-off.

(Un)Fortunately, eight years later, things have come a long way in the drones and unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) sector. As described in two studies published in December 2017 and June this year, Australian researchers built a low cost, efficient drone customised to picking up and dropping off whale blow samples. Vanessa Pirotta, a PhD at the Macquarie University, Sydney, and coauthor of both papers, said their new system “minimises sample contamination by using a flip-lid petri dish. We have also used the most current next-generation sequencing techniques for processing the samples.”

The team of researchers scanned an area off the coast of New South Wales for a migrating population of humpback whales. After identifying some individuals, they launched their drone a research vessel stationed nearby. The drone lifted off in accordance with the whales’ breathing rhythms. As soon as an identified individual surfaced and released its blow, the flip lid system built into the drone exposed the petri dish for sampling and closed it once it had its quarry. This nifty mechanism reduced the time for which the dish was exposed to the environment by a significant amount, allowing the researchers to collect snot from different whales in a population at different times with minimal contamination.

Back in the lab, scientists set to work uncovering the bacteria and viruses that lived in the snot (the first time such information has been obtained with the help of a UAV). When compared to previously known baseline values for whales, this microbiome and virome data can provide a sense of the health of the whales in a population, trackable over time. By recording bacterial and viral density and correlating it to health, scientists can also design early warning systems to sound an alarm if such populations are on the verge of collapse.

Studies like these are proof of how UAVs have revolutionised animal behaviour studies. Scientists often yearn for such non-invasive methods because they carry fewer liabilities vis-a-vis inducing physical or psychological changes in the population being studied. Older methods like using a pole to manually collect blow from whales could cause distress or induce chemical responses in an individual and potentially compromise an experiment.

At the same time, the non-invasiveness of drones has its share of issues. When questioned about this, Pirotta told The Wire that, “Fortunately, we saw no behavioural responses to the drones in our study. That means whales either knew the drone was there and did nothing or did not even know they were there at all.”

Scientists are optimistic about the future of drones in ecology studies and conservation efforts. “UAVs could be very useful for studying the effect of sound or vessel traffic on the behaviour of marine mammals,” Sutaria said, “and could be used to study interactions between individuals in a cluster, collect data on foraging behaviour, and reproductive behaviour too.”

Ian Kerr, the CEO of Ocean Alliance, a nonprofit organisation working on whale conversation, has worked on building robots for whale snot collection. He told Popular Science, “Having looked down at whales with drones after 30 years of studying them, and seeing behaviour and activity that you could only imagine from the boat, I can’t go back to studying whales without a drone. I just can’t do it.”

The health of large aquatic mammals clusters also provides key indicators of ocean health. Pirotta told the British Council, “The more we sample from whales, the better picture we build to learn more about their health. At the same time, we are also learning more about ocean health by sampling microbes living in our marine environment.” For example, she added, the whales they were studying off of New South Wales might have been ferrying microbes from Antarctica to Australia.

While anthropogenic global warming, and the consequent human-driven sixth mass extinction, should be reason enough to care about these animals, bacteria piggybacking on migrating whales spotlights a stronger reason for those who want one: human health. Specifically, could humans contract a zoonotic disease via a virus hosted by a whale? “Yes, totally,” Sutaria said.

The information contained in whale blow goes beyond giving us a handle on protecting whales, and actually offers a glimpse of the health and functioning of a living biosphere around these mammals. “If whale health or other large mammal health is going downhill, so are all the other health systems that depend on terrestrial and aquatic biomass,” Sutaria said.

Ronak Gupta recently completed his masters in fluid mechanics from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore. He writes about all things science.

A Surprise Journey, an Unexpected New Year’s Gift From Across the Arabian Sea

Of the 14 humpback whales to sport transmitters, she is the sole female, and she alone has made the more-than 1,500-kilometre journey across the bay.

A humpback whale in the Arabian Sea. Credit: Darryl MacDonald

Four days before Christmas, India’s west coast had a surprise visitor. Her name is Luban (Arabic for ‘frankincense’), and she is a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae). Researchers had tagged her with a satellite transmitter in the Gulf of Masirah, Oman, on November 17. A month after that event, she took off across the Arabian Sea, arriving well in time for Christmas off Goa.

Scientists recognise individual whales from their tail flukes since each is as unique as a fingerprint. The pattern on the base of Luban’s tail resembles a tree and so her name. Researchers have seen her distinct tail break the sea surface since 2002, but they tagged her only in 2017.

“The whales are not caught,” Suaad Al Haarthi, program director of the Environment Society of Oman, told The Wire. “The tag is placed on the whale from a boat while the whale is at the surface and freely swimming.”

Of the 14 humpbacks to sport transmitters, she is the sole female, and she alone has made the more-than 1,500-kilometre journey across the bay.

“My heart is beating faster than when it was last in love,” said Indian marine biologist Dipani Sutaria in an email a day after Luban surfaced off Goa.

Sutaria alerted a network of ocean watchers – fishermen, naturalists, scientists, Coast Guard, Forest Department, NGOs, customs and port authorities – spread from Gujarat south along the coasts of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Lakshadweep to keep an eye out for the whale. Then, unable to contain her excitement, Sutaria set off to spot this Yuletide visitor from the Middle East.

Whales circumnavigate the world, and none more so than humpback whales. In 2010, one extraordinary female swam 9,800 kilometres from Brazil to Madagascar, setting the record for the longest migration by any mammal. The following year, a Western North Pacific grey whale upset that record by 1,000 kilometres. Humpback whales travel 5,000 kilometres annually from the cold polar waters, where they feed on crustaceans called krill in summer, to breed in the tropics during winter. Luban’s journey pales in comparison.

So why are researchers in Oman and India excited by her coast-to-coast trip? Because the humpback whales of the Arabian Sea don’t behave like other whales, even of their species.

Map of Luban's journey. Source: <a href="http://www.wildlifetracking.org/index.shtml?tag_id=171995&full=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.wildlifetracking.org</a>

Map of Luban’s journey. Source: www.wildlifetracking.org

In 1997, Yuri Mikhalev, of South Ukranian Pedagogical University, published a report that shocked researchers. He dug through recently declassified whaling records maintained by the Soviet Union. In 1963, Slava, a 508-foot factory ship, had spotted 20 to 30 humpbacks in the Gulf of Aden, on its way to Antarctica where it hunted whales in their feeding grounds.

Whalers figured humpbacks from the southern hemisphere travelled north into the bay. But the timing of these marine creatures seemed to be off. It was the season to feed near Antarctica. Why were these whales hanging about in tropical waters, presumably starving?

By this time, intensive operations had cleaned up the southern ocean of whales. In 1965, the crew of Slava and another factory ship, the 33,000-ton Sovetskaya Ukraina, one of the two largest whaling ships in the world, took four whales en route to the southern ocean.

In early November 1966, Sovetskaya Ukraina chugged up the continental shelf off Oman, harpooning 62 humpback whales. It steamed across to the Gulf of Kutch, off Pakistan, where it killed 164. On one day, November 15, 1966, the whalers killed 12 off the coast of Bombay. They slaughtered 60% of the whales they spotted, taking 238 humpbacks in all that year. These cetaceans were naïve, never having encountered whalers before or since. The Soviet Union reported these figures neither to the Bureau of International Whaling Statistics, Norway, nor to the International Whaling Commission.

But scientists aboard the whaling ships kept clandestine notes on the butchered whales. Examining these and other records, two researchers – Yulia Ivashchenko and Phillip Clapham – think “the Soviet whalers killed at least 180,000 more whales than they reported between 1948 and 1973” globally. Charles Homans, a journalist, calls the scale and wastefulness of the massacre ‘The Most Senseless Environmental Crime Of The 20th Century’.

Using whaling records, Mikhalev reports about 50% of the 238 whales taken from the Arabian Sea had been feeding. This was unusual since they weren’t known to feed in tropical waters. If they managed to find schools of krill and fish in the same area where they breed, could these marine mammals reside permanently in these waters?

Since the year 2000, the Environment Society of Oman and its partners have studied marine life, including humpback whales, off their coast. They couldn’t find any matches in the fluke patterns between the marine mammals in Omani waters and members of the southern hemisphere population near Madagascar.

Even though the IUCN Red List categorises the species as of ‘least concern’, it recognised the distinct Arabian Sea population as ‘endangered’ in 2008. From scrutinising more than 10,000 photos, researchers estimated that less than 100 Arabian Sea humpback whales were alive. What impact that catastrophic November of 1966 had on this population is unknown.

A 2014 genetics study put the debate to rest. It showed these whales had been isolated from the southern Indian Ocean humpbacks for 70,000 years, dubbing it “the world’s most isolated humpback whale population”. Their nearest relatives, the southern hemisphere humpback whales, breed on a different schedule, reinforcing their isolation. Their slick bodies bear neither the scars of shark bites nor barnacles.

The Arabian Sea humpback whales are the only sedentary whales in the world, feeding and breeding in the same area. And for a good reason.

The waters off Oman’s coastline are fertile feeding grounds. Since the northern Arabian Sea is landlocked, warm summer monsoon winds churn the water, driving phytoplankton growth. The green soupy waters sustain fish and krill, allowing humpbacks to live here all year long.

The network of marine researchers around the Arabian Sea had come to accept the whales’ short journeys up and down the coast of Oman – until Luban’s foray into Indian waters took them by surprise and made Sutaria’s heart beat faster.

Male humpback whales sing haunting songs and have signature flourishes. The song features of the Arabia Sea whales are different from other humpbacks. Credit: Environment Society of Oman

Blue and Bryde’s whales are relatively more common along the Indian coastline. Humpbacks, however, seem to be found only on the west coast and so rarely that Sutaria keeps count.

In a report to the International Whaling Commission, she wrote, approximately 70 to 75 baleen whale carcasses washed up on the west coast between 1980 to 2014. Only seven were humpbacks. In 2006, the Indian Coast Guard took photographs of one, and in 2008, fishers freed another tangled in a fishing net. In March 2016, a male sang his haunting song off Goa.

“No one has carried out long-term surveys in the region, and our current work in India is to monitor the species, either via fishermen who might sight them or via individuals that get washed ashore,” Sutaria told The Wire.

When fishermen see the whales, which they call Maccha Mata, Maccha Raja or Maccha Babu, they don’t approach them out of fear. They break a coconut as an offering and report a description of the fluke to researchers.

Despite the many pairs of eyes scanning the horizon for a spout of water jetting into the air from her blowhole or a fluke breaking the surface, Luban didn’t show herself to anyone. “Madam Luban is on the move, and the satellites are not doing a good job,” Sutaria wrote. “So we are in limbo in Goa on Christmas in field clothes. Such is life!”

By 8 pm on Christmas, Luban surfaced, and her tag marked her position about 50 kilometres off Kannur, Kerala.

Why would Luban make what seems like a long trip for her population? Could something be wrong with her – illness, loss of territory to another? Or could she have followed an oceanic disturbance after Cyclone Ockhi?

“Humpback whales feed on krill and areas of high productivity are of course a reason for them to party,” said Sutaria. “According to Mahi Mankeshwar, who checked the satellite imagery data between December 13 and 18, chlorophyll concentration patches in the central Arabian sea and from Goa to Kerala, India, were dense and rich. We cannot link the two for sure unless we actually re-sight Luban and observe her behaviour.”

Perhaps the whales were travelling locally within the bay. “We had previously suspected that this was a shared population between Oman and other states such as India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan,” says Al Harthi. “However, over the years, we had not had any photo-id matches and no evidence to support this theory. Now that Luban has provided the evidence that there is a more likely connection, this will require further genetic investigation. It could potentially mean that there are more whales out there than had been observed in Omani waters. It also tells us a regional approach is required for appropriate conservation management of this population.”

The tail fluke of Luban showing the tree-shaped marking. Credit: Environment Society of Oman

Humpback whales usually travel with young or with others in a pod. So it’s also possible Luban could have been travelling with companions. “When Luban was tagged, there was another sub-adult whale with her,” says Al Harthi. “We would be curious to find out if they made the journey across the Indian Ocean together, and hope that the team of scientists in India will be able to re-sight them.”

On New Year’s Day, Luban is still off the coast of Alappuzha, out of sight of any humans. “For me, this is sacred, an epiphany for a good start to 2018!” said Sutaria.

Janaki Lenin is the author of My Husband and Other Animals. She lives in a forest with snake-man Rom Whitaker and tweets at @janakilenin.

Social image: A humpback whale in the Arabian Sea. Credit: Andrew Willson.

Underwater Noise Pollution Is on the Rise and Its Effects Have Been Deadly

Marine mammals have been studied by scientists in more detail than many fish found deeper in the ocean, and their acoustic behaviour has been a source of much fascination.

Sound plays such a vital role for marine mammals because it covers a range of functions essential for their survival. Credit: Free-Photos/pixabay

Sixteen whale carcasses washed up on India’s Konkan coast in 2015, followed by 20 in 2016. A 37-foot whale washed up dead on Mumbai’s Juhu beach in January 2016, drawing huge crowds. Its bones are set to be displayed later at the Marine Biodiversity Centre in Navi Mumbai. In the same month, over 120 short-finned pilot whales washed ashore in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, and local fishermen worked to rescue as many as they could by towing them back into the water. Scientists from the Central Marine Fisheries Institute (CMFI) noticed injuries on the whales and assessed them to have been in a state of shock.

This is more than has been seen in the entire previous decade. Besides, scientists from the CMFI and the international community have reported sightings of whales in much shallower waters closer to the shoreline than their customary habitat in the open sea.

Stranded whales that lie gasping for breath on beaches or whale carcasses that wash up in numbers on shores bring home to us in very dramatic fashion that all is not well under the water. It is not their mortality but the scale and spectacle of such events that makes them uncommon and alerts us to the causes that could have led to them. The degradation of marine habitats due to destruction of underwater food sources and to invasive amounts of plastic waste has been discussed for many years now but what has received lesser attention is the effect of anthropogenic sound on the lives of marine mammals.

While a vast number of vertebrate and invertebrate forms of marine life, that includes fish, insects, molluscs and crustaceans are found in oceans, marine mammal species is a much smaller sub sect of approximately 129 species. They include dolphins, seals, whales, manatees, walruses and polar bears. Even these are not a distinct biological grouping. Cetaceans, comprising odontocetes (toothed whales) and mysticetes (baleen whales) are fully aquatic. Pinnipeds like seals and walruses are semi-aquatic, spending long periods of time in the water, but coming ashore to mate, moult and rear their young. A third category, like otters and polar bears, spends longer on land than in the water. Although they are few, marine mammal species have been studied by scientists in more detail than many fish found deeper in the ocean. And the acoustic behaviour of these mammals has been a source of much fascination.

A world of sounds

Songs of the Humpback Whale, a 35-minute long recording of the vocalisations of these whales, was released in 1970 and went on to sell over 30 million copies. Roger Payne, an American biologist, environmentalist and bioacoustician, had heard about incidental whale recordings in 1966. He had recorded the “eerie underwater moaning and wailing sounds” using a secret hydrophone off the coast of Bermuda and subsequently produced the album with his wife, Katharine Payne. He claimed that they were a life-changing experience. They captured the imagination of millions of human listeners, who understood for the first time how important sound was as a means of communication in marine species that had been imagined to be silent until then.

As it happens, sound has an entirely different dimension underwater than it does through the air, and this has been of interest to scientists who have been studying the effects of anthropogenic sounds on marine mammals. In a landmark study published in June 2007, Douglas Nowacek, Lesley Thorne, David Johnston and Peter Tyack wrote,

Among marine mammals, the cetaceans (whales and dolphins) utilise a wide band of acoustic frequencies. The massive blue whale Balaenoptera musculus produces low-frequency sounds down to ~15 Hz, and on the other end of the spectrum several species of porpoises (e.g. harbour porpoises – Phocoena phocoena) emit echolocation signals at 120–150 kHz. This broad range of frequencies intersects with many of the sounds humans introduce into the water, including ship noise, sonars of various types and seismic exploration signals. Some sounds produced by humans are well above the range used by marine mammals, e.g. high frequency echo sounders. … In the ocean, acoustic energy propagates efficiently, travelling fast and potentially over great distances. Sound travels almost five times faster through sea water than through air, and low frequencies can travel hundreds of kilometres with little loss in energy (Urick, 1983). Sound propagation can be affected by many factors… So, the sound arriving at an animal is subject to propagation conditions that can be quite complex, which can in turn significantly affect the characteristics of arriving sound energy. (Emphasis added.)

The structure of the ear in marine mammals is similar in several respects to land-dwelling mammals. However, there is a significant difference in how they receive sound. Pinnipeds like seals, walruses and polar bears have ears that are amphibious: they work equally efficiently in land and water. Compared to these, cetaceans that are fully aquatic – like whales – hear very well under the water but poorly over it. Both land-based and marine mammals have an outer ear and an inner ear, vocal cords, lungs and a larynx, the way they generate sounds and the acoustic range of such sounds varies greatly between the species. In addition to this, the hearing range of marine mammals is far greater than their vocalisation range. This is because they have to be vigilant about a much bigger variety of sounds from possible predators, even if the sounds they make to communicate with their fellow creatures are limited to a narrower span.

Sound plays such a vital role for marine mammals because it covers a range of functions essential for their survival. They use it in foraging for food, navigation by echolocation, communicating through clicks, whistles, moans and wails, and during breeding in calling for mates through recognisable sounds (like the songs of the humpback whales).

Minimising human interference

When human-made sounds interfere with marine mammals’ biosonar sounds, it’s called masking. Mothers and calves in the ocean often communicate through whistles, while clicks are two-way acoustic signals that are used as echolocation to detect prey or to escape predators. When anthropogenic sounds increase, they mask important biosonar signals. Fuether, higher levels of ambient noise can cause cetaceans to migrate away from their customary routes, with attendant problems of stress and deprivation from normal food sources. Even higher levels of sound can produce serious health problems for sound-dependent mammals, including internal bleeding and haemorrhaging. As a result, increased levels of anthropogenic sounds are of particular concern for marine researchers and conservationists.

Among the various sources of sound, naval sonar has been identified as having contributed to a bulk of marine mammal stranding. Naval sonars are spread over low, mid and high-frequency bands that directly fall in the hearing frequency range of multiple marine species. Such transmissions, within close range of these mammals, can cause them to become disoriented or suffer internal bleeding, and they could subsequently become stranded at nearby shores. Another major source of undersea sound is the oil and gas industry, which uses compressed air for seismic surveys and to identify undersea reserves. These surveys have been recorded as major source of noise pollution, leading to temporary or permanent migrations of species. The shipping industry also generates ubiquitous low-frequency noise in the ocean, reported to have been growing at three decibel per decade since the pre-industrial era due to increased marine traffic.

Closer home, the Indian Ocean region is emerging as an important area for the study of the effects of such anthropogenic sound and ways to contain their impacts. Arnab Das, a former commander in the Indian Navy and currently the director of the maritime research centre at the Indian Maritime Foundation, Pune, has articulated the need for an ‘underwater domain awareness’ (UDA). Das was a sonar engineer in the Navy who became interested in the subject of undersea sound and its effect on marine mammals when working on his PhD. He has said, “The acoustic habitat degradation is a complex issue specifically for formalizing a regulatory framework and requires significant Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA). UDA at its heart mandates high levels of acoustic capacity to monitor every situation in the undersea domain. It is our ability to know what is happening in the undersea realm of our maritime space for monitoring and initiating appropriate action.”

UDA has to be developed with the involvement and efforts of all the stakeholders involved: “the national security apparatus that takes care of maritime security and defence, the blue economy components of the maritime industry engaged in deriving wealth from the blue seas, the environmental regulators and disaster management authorities responsible for conservation and safety from the seas and the last one being science and technology providers that will aid in improving our access to the deep oceans.” Although the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) has attained strategic significance in the 21st century, this has also meant vulnerability from the seas and severe environmental degradation, with the blue economic thrust also likely to translate to far more degradation of the ocean environment. Das is sure that “India in its aspiration to be a global power cannot continue to ignore its maritime potential. Sustainable growth with a safe and secure maritime environment is possible only with effective UDA.”

“There is no reason to think that threats due to anthropogenic noise do not occur in the Indian Ocean,” Divya Panicker, a doctoral student studying marine mammal populations in southwest Indian waters at the University of Washington, Seattle, told The Wire. “Firstly, it is critical for us to understand the soundscape in India waters and what this means to marine mammals here. This knowledge is vital to design appropriate mitigation strategies. So we need to focus on developing rigorous scientific research in the area. A collaborative effort between scientists, governments and industry is absolutely essential and can go a long way in minimising disturbance in some situations. For example, in cases where sounds cannot be completely removed, agencies have modified the sound so that frequencies or amplitudes are different from that used by the animals, or before conducting operations, the area is checked for marine mammal presence.”

Conservationists who have long worked with species on land are also lending their voice to the need to increase our knowledge of habitat degradation in the ocean. Vivek Menon, the executive director of the Wildlife Trust of India, wrote in the August 2016 issue of Sanctuary Asia, “The most important thing I learned … was not that there was a problem. That was shocking, true. But the most important thing is that there is a solution. Noise-quietening devices are common among advanced nations. The US Navy funds the maximum research on this and other ocean noise related issues. Our navy and petroleum companies could use these devices, most certainly at a cost, to greatly reduce ocean noise.”

Scharada Dubey is the author of Monkeys in My Backyard (2012).